Wednesday, October 15, 2014

While Boer leaders in South Africa aren’t openly joining Maritz’s rebellion, they aren’t denouncing it either.

While French President Raymond Poincaré was visiting Gen. Joffre at Romilly-sur-Seine last week, a German aviator tried to assassinate him from the air. He missed and was shot down by a French plane.

Portuguese troops are mobilizing, possibly to fight Germans in Africa. Yesterday there were false reports that it had declared war on Germany.

Headline of the Day -100 That is Not a Euphemism: “Germans Recapture Lyck.”

The Austrians have Sarajevo locked down tight for the trial of the 22 alleged conspirators in the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

France says Germany took 4,000 French boys aged 15 to 17 from occupied territories and sent them to Germany, to prevent them eventually joining the French army. I guess this counts as long-term thinking.

Carranza resigns as provisional president and is replaced by Gen. Antonio Villareal. Which is what Pancho Villa wanted, so he’ll be totally satisfied now, probably.

The bill to give the Philippines greater autonomy and a more representative government, leading to very eventual independence, passes the House 211-59. The Senate is not expected to get to it this session.

French and British troops drive the Germans out of Ypres. It just occurred to me that the English pronounced it Wipers but I don’t know how the Germans pronounced it.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Germans claim to have found papers left behind by the Belgian General Staff in its hasty retreat from Brussels that show a 1906 agreement for British troops to be invited into Belgium in the event of a war between France and Germany, which justifies the German invasion because Belgium never intended to keep its vaunted neutrality. Britain denies there was ever any such agreement. There wasn’t.

Christabel Pankhurst shows up in New York, her first visit to America, to help the suffrage cause here. The NYT says she has “rosy cheeks and she looked very pretty as she came off the boat yesterday.” Do they describe her clothing in great detail? Of course they do. They think she’s about 23, which would mean she started her suffrage activism when she was 12. She tells the Times that “The suffragettes in England are in favour of the war.” However she does find the timing of the war unfortunate, coming when the British government couldn’t have “held out” against her much longer.